sandpaper diaries
by Digital-Dragon-Master
Summary: The road of a new hunter isn't easy. Written for the Women Fandom Hates - Love Fest on Livejournal.


A/N: Another for the love fest on Livejournal. This one, I believe, is one of my better attempts at something long for this show. I remain very proud of it. Spoilers leading up to Born Under a Bad Sign.

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><p>i.<p>

You take off after your mom disagrees with your plan to keep hunting. Honestly you weren't expecting her to like it in the least, but she could've saved the screaming for when you were already out the door. (She didn't scream; she probably expected it, you've had your mind somewhere else for years and with a taste of hunting it's just the right bit of wetting your lips, just enough of a taste that you crave more. Anyway, she didn't scream, you realize after thinking about it, just stern facts, ones that you _knew_ from the get-go.) It's all as well. You've got a bag already packed, a shotgun in the trunk of your truck, and your father's knife on your thigh, so you're on the road in an hour, promising halfheartedly (only in tone, you meant your words entirely) to write and visit and waving at Ash with a joke to hold down the fort (and a million regrets, a million wishes that you said something more and told him just how much of a brother he's been these last several years).

After about ten minutes of driving aimlessly, you realize you have no idea where you're going.

ii.

You've got some contacts - and by that you mean people who've been through the Roadhouse whose phone numbers you remember - and you call around, asking about hunts and patterns and ghosts and monsters about. Sure as silver, each one asks you if you're calling for Ellen, each one asks you if you're serious, each one calls you _lil' kid_ or _Jo-Jo_ or _babydoll_ or some other old nickname, and to the last you promise a slow and painful death if he doesn't amend that, thank you very much. After you convince (most of) them to take you seriously, a few leads trickle through, down to you, the bottom of the grapevine, and a hunger builds in the pit of your stomach as you book it to the site of your first case, a small town in Oklahoma.

(Later it all sets in that it's not that there weren't other cases, it's that those hunter guys- those guys who've known you since you had to stand on a box to see over the bar and always think of you as Bill and Ellen's lil' sprout- they took you seriously, but seriously enough to know you could get yourself _killed_ and you didn't learn about half the cases you could have, like werewolves and shape shifters and rugarus.)

Turns out it's a bust anyway. Nothing paranormal about it. Just a false lead.

iii.

The first real case you get is a ghost, fittingly. You're ready for this one, because it's killed a whole family and a kid's gone missing, so you set your traps and joke and quip in your head to keep your knees from knocking together. (It didn't work.) For a moment you wish for a partner, someone to be sensible while you smirk or wink or make a not-funny remark about the whole situation, something that you've learned to emulate after watching so many tell stories about their hunts or even now after watching one- _being on one_- yourself.

But see, those thoughts lead back to the idea that you need someone else there, which you don't, you definitely don't. You can do this all by yourself, and you don't- you didn't want to hunt with anyone else, especially not Sam and Dean. You didn't want to and you still don't. You don't want someone around who doesn't treat you like an adult, like the hunter you are (or rather could be), especially not those boys. (Not the boys who, out of anyone, might be able to understand you and your lust for the job, your need to connect with a person you've never known (though they knew him but not really, you'll never know), your need to be seen as something _more_ and something _important_; no, not them, never them, and you never do acknowledge it, not out loud, you never say _i kinda wanted to hunt with you guys again_ or _i don't really hate you_ or _you just make me feel like i belong, you know?_ Not out loud and not to their faces, even though a long time later you accept that they fit into your little broken family and maybe that's why it hurt so much.)

So because you don't need anyone there with you, you don't almost freak out and remember those rotting hands on your skin, you don't drop your knife and you definitely don't bite back a scream when the ghost materializes in front of you, picking it up just in time to fight it back and shaking with relief by the time you can salt and burn the bones.

No, you handle it all like a complete professional. You'll show everyone who's doubted you.

iv.

When you get to the motel, you take a shower and scrub at your head and your arm where H. H. Holmes had touched you. It's been weeks but you still shudder to think it.

Next to your bed your cell phone taunts you, speed dial just a press away and a soothing voice ready to whisper into your ear, tell you to come home, hold you in her arms.

You cry into poorly insulated blankets, wrapped up in your winter coat and curled into a fortress of pillows, telling yourself everyone's got to start somewhere and everyone has their things and your Daddy probably had his and you're saving people so all this is just _worth it_, right?

v.

Money starts to run thin. Even with a few cases, it's not enough to really support yourself, and though you write home you never ask for anything. Asking would defeat your hopes to do this all by yourself, and more than that...well, your mom needs that. It's not like they're rolling in it back at the Roadhouse, after all; Mom needs that money. You can get your own.

Getting money, you eventually realize, means you'll need a job, means you'll need to find a place to take jobs close together, a place where you can have a day job- or a night job, or a weekend job- and still go out on hunts, because you are _not_ giving up the life you've worked so hard to finally live. (A different bed every few nights, lumpy mattresses, two-star road stops and convenience stores, almost dying every other week- but looking back, you still would choose it, you still would run out in a heartbeat.)

After looking over patterns of demons and monsters, you decide a place in Minnesota would put you close to enough so you're still making a difference and give you enough opportunities for jobs- you're shooting for something in a bar, something you have a lot of experience doing, you've been working the Roadhouse since before you could legally serve beer, since before you'd had a sip of it just to see what it was like, since before the hunters started appraising you with their eyes and you responded with a nice broken toe. A few interviews and a few towns brings you to Duluth, somewhere large enough for supernatural activity, large enough so you can blend in from the jobs, large enough so you don't have to hum to yourself to relax.

vi.

The bar's a bit quieter than you're used to, but it's the hustle and bustle that you love, and you settle in easily, part-time as a waitress while you lay ghosts to rest and kill demons, and you hope one day even a vampire.

A very even correspondence has settled in between you and your mom, and you're alright with that now, you even miss her, though you're not going to say that, you haven't cried for home since that first (second) hunt. Every time you think about it everything heats up and you have to focus on how good it felt to receive that mother's hug or that widow's handshake or that little kid's grateful smile; there are families that will live because of you, and that's all that matters.

You're ashamed to have even missed home.

(A rowdy bunch of background music dances through your head, punctuated with tales of the hunt and Ash's periodic laughter or sly comment, and you always have to focus a bit harder on what you're fighting for in those times.)

vii.

Just call home, just call home, just listen to her voice and you'll stop feeling like this, it's fine, because you didn't die and the last thing you actually said to her isn't _see ya around, i guess_ and not _mom, 'm sorry, i love you, i really do_ like you really wish it was, even though it's not the hunt you're sorry for, it's how abrasive you've been about it, because you really _can't_ ever regret this life, it's what you were born for- but still, you almost, but you **didn't** so you don't really need to call her- just call home, just call _home_-

You write another postcard.

viii.

Every now and then, when the bitterness truly fades from the forefront of your mind, you flirt with the idea of calling them too. But what would you even s_ay,_ after the way everything turned out? A quick _hi, hello_ wouldn't do it, and you don't want to apologize, you **can't** apologize, because an apology forced out your mouth would taste like poison and just make it all worse. What's supposed to be said swims just out of reach, so that speed dial button remains cold as well, even though you wonder if they even know you're out hunting, you wonder if you'll run into them, you wonder, you wonder, you wonder.

A brief text that you regret in the morning confirms your location, your current profession, and not much else, just a tacked on offer to team up if they're ever in the neighborhood. A response a few days later gets a nerve-wrecked glance and a hasty deletion, and it's clear that texting Sam would have been much more worthwhile.

(The message was kind. Confused. It asked a few questions that would never be answered.)

ix.

A fresh scar adorns your arm and you try not to wince as you doctor the wound, alcohol stinging in other ways than you want right now. A day of bed rest would do you wonders but it's work tomorrow and you're supposed to close up late. Instead of sleeping, you let your mind wander about, from how your mom and Ash are doing back home to your dad to that last kill to Dean-

Shrugging your arms and brushing against your scar, you wince and scold yourself for only a few moments; if you see him again - him and Sam - it'd be nice, but you aren't getting your hopes up (at least you weren't trying to), and whatever, it's your mind and you can think what you want.

You let your thoughts linger a bit longer on him than they should, a very determined _fuck it, i'll enjoy myself_ taking point in all this.

x.

Another long night. Your arm is just starting to feel better and you've got the next few nights off. You're itching for another hunt. You're dying to fight something, to save someone, to keep putting those things in their place, and you're very well aware that it's an addiction, one that you will always keep feeding until the day you die.

Whether that comes sooner or later is the tricky part.

Soon, you'll be off and able to call around for more in-state, in-county hunts. Soon. Soon.

Soon, you think, just as soon as you chase out whoever it is that's just opened that door before you could lock it up.


End file.
